Out of many, one lan­guage

STU­DENTS OF Span­ish from var­i­ous ed­u­ca­tional in­sti­tu­tions across the is­land gath­ered re­cently at the Webster Me­mo­rial United Church in St An­drew to cel­e­brate the birth of Je­sus in a carol ser­vice con­ducted en­tirely in Span­ish.

Stu­dents ex­pe­ri­enced a full immersion in Span­ish cul­ture through par­tic­i­pa­tion in the read­ing of Bi­ble verses and singing of tra­di­tional and mod­ern car­ols in Span­ish.

The over­all ob­jec­tive was to have Span­ish lan­guage stu­dents use what they have learnt and be ex­posed to this as­pect of the cul­ture.

“Over the years, with this ac­tiv­ity, I have seen stu­dents gain con­fi­dence not only in the lan­guage, but in them­selves,” said Emma-June Bell, founder and co­or­di­na­tor of the Na­tional Span­ish Carol Ser­vice.

“The class­room set­ting is great, but to con­tinue to mo­ti­vate our stu­dents, we must set them goals out­side of the text­book and make every day a mem­o­rable con­nec­tion for them,” Bell said.

“In Ja­maica, there’s noth­ing quite like Christ­mas, so con­nect­ing Span­ish cul­ture and lan­guage to a time that every Ja­maican child knows well makes this carol ser­vice a pow­er­ful learn­ing tool. It’s also highly en­ter­tain­ing,” she added.

SHARED LAN­GUAGE

For the 11th stag­ing, the Em­bassy of Spain en­cour­aged the par­tic­i­pa­tion of Span­ish­s­peak­ing coun­tries with em­bassies and con­sulates in Ja­maica.

“We in­vited other em­bassies to share car­ols and pop­u­lar read­ings with the stu­dents this year, to en­sure we con­tinue to ex­pand their learn­ing in ad­di­tion to show­ing our col­lec­tive ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the re­cep­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage and cul­ture here in Ja­maica,” said Car­men Rives Ruiz-Tapi­ador, chargé d’af­faires of the Em­bassy of Spain.

“The in­clu­sion of other Span­ish-speak­ing coun­tries apart from Spain is an in­di­ca­tor that Span­ish lan­guage is shared and has ex­panded. This year’s par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Em­bassy of the United States of Amer­ica is fur­ther demon­stra­tion of the expansion and in­clu­sive­ness of the lan­guage. The United States is home to more Rev­erend Astor Car­lyle (left), min­is­ter of Webster Me­mo­rial United Church wel­comes chargé d’af­faires of the Em­bassy of Spain, Car­men Rives RuizTapi­ador, while Arch­bishop of Kingston Ken­neth Richards looks on, at the Na­tional Span­ish Carol Ser­vice held on Tues­day, Novem­ber 22.

Span­ish speak­ers than in Spain it­self,” RuizTapi­ador said.

The event which was en­dorsed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, Youth and In­for­ma­tion stands as an ex­cel­lent model for cul­tural ac­tiv­i­ties that en­cour­ages bilin­gual­ism, a tool of dis­tinc­tion in to­day’s mar­ket place.